Don't let the bells end!

For the past couple of years, I've made mix albums for my family [1]. But they've always just basically been collections of my favorite songs of the year. Which, while fine, always left something wanting: it is, after all, the holiday season, and what could better speak to the twisted & tangled emotions of said season than a holiday mix, full of songs about the holidays?

So, this year, that's what I've made. 10 songs, all about the holidays (or reminding me of them—you'll see, when we get there).

Charlie Brown christmas tree, as very obvious symbol of generally disenfranchised individual.

& because I'm a very lazy bastard, I'm going to write about them on this blog, and I'm going to spread them out into 10 separate posts. What better way to fill up 10 (+1) posts in December? After all, I've got a 4-month-old tradition of posting regularly to this blog, and I've got to keep that up!

I'm also going to be experimenting with posting MP3s of each of these songs. Based on my own experience—I read a ton of MP3 blogs, and the more I read, the more music I buy at proper music stores—this will only lead more people to buy these songs, rather than simply stealing them. [2] That said, I have a fairly conflicted internal relationship with posting music online, mainly because I don't know whether I'm a very representative sample w/r/t my music purchasing habits.

So, in other words: make me proud, people.

I'll start tomorrow, and I'll also keep this post updated with links to each of the tracks. Which are:

1. Sparks, "Thank God It's Not Christmas"
2. Orange Juice, "Holiday Hymn"
3. Sufjan Stevens, "That Was the Worst Christmas Ever!"
4. The Darkness, "Christmas Time (Don't Let the Bells End)"
5. Pixies, "Holiday Song"
6. De La Soul, "Millie Pulled a Pistol on Santa"
7. Prince, "Another Lonely Christmas"
8. Low, "Blue Christmas"
9. The Pogues, "Fairytale of New York"
10. Take That, "Back For Good"

[1] last year's, along with ruminations on same.

[2] I'll also be downsampling them to 96Kbps, which still generally gives a good-enough representation of the song, but without being CD quality. And maybe I'll delete them 10 minutes after posting them, just for fun.